Sandwich Plate Calculator Lite

This tool lets you to predict the deflection and stress of sandwich beam and plates. The deflection and stress levels predictions are required for sandwich or thick beam or plate design for a given shape, load, boundary and materials. Use the tool to design of sandwich beam or plates for any uniform pressure or point loading.

SANDWICH structures constitute, high stiff skin and low modulus core. The face skins are made of Metal, Non-metal, Plastics and composite sheets. The core is made of lightweight structural element of Wood, Foam or Honeycomb. The skin and core are combined using adhesive bonding, co-extrusion or lamination process. Some of the failure modes of sandwich structures are Bond failure, Skin yielding, Skin wrinkling, Core shear and Core fracture.

Usually, for a given Length, Width, load, boundary, we change the material and thickness to meet the deflection or strength criterion. Deflection limit depends on aesthetic (span/20), pop out, design limits (span/250, span/400, span/600), etc. Stress limit depends on the linear elastics stress, yield stress, ultimate failure stress, etc. A factor safety is usually added as per the Design codes.

Assumptions:1. The plates are flat with uniform thickness.2. The length is greater than width3. All forces, loading and reactions are acting normal to the plate surface.

Theory of Plates:The general governing differential equation for an isotropic plate combined with shear deformation theory of thick beam or plates, relating the load, rigidity and flesxural and shear deformation is used for linear isotropic sandwich plate or beam performance prediction.

Isotropic plate differential equation including the effect of lateral loads and forces in the middle plane of the plate used for geometrical nonlinear performance prediction.Similarly, orthotropic plate governing equation is also considered for orthotropic plate performance prediction. Analytical solution for the above type of plate governing equations was compiled for various type of plate, boundary, loading conditions and is used for the plate performance prediction. The results predicted by Sandwich Calculator are also compared with numerical simulations. The analytical results predicted by app matches closely with the industry standard numerical finite element analysis solver results.